Professional gaming has always been a serious pursuit that attracted dedicated players and a large audience, and with immersive technologies becoming more pervasive, the esports crowd is increasingly embracing VR.

“For the first time in generations, we’re witnessing the birth of a new major sport, and it’s happening with unprecedented speed,” says ESPN The Magazine, Senior Editor, Megan Greenwall.

This trend is in large part spurred by hardware manufacturers, who recognize that without “sticky” content that keeps punters coming back and hooks them for longer, they are unlikely to reach consumer adoption critical mass anytime soon.

VR esports are the latest rage, especially for location-based entertainment
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“VR esports are the latest rage, especially for location-based entertainment. The Omni motion platform adds the physical engagement of walking and running to the gaming experience and that physical element combined with multiplayer gameplay and competition results in high repeat play. We’re not a stand-in-place VR attraction that players try just once. Our core players come back every week,” says Jan Goetgeluk, founder and CEO of Virtuix.

Virtuix is a Texas-based start-up founded in 2013 best known for developing the Omni VR treadmill. They raised over $20M and have shipped more than 3,000 Omni systems to 500+ commercial entertainment venues around the world. Recently, HTC and HP announced a partnership with the company, putting down a $50,000 Prize pool for ESPORTS tournaments in 2019.

VR hardware manufacturers recognize that without 'sticky' content that keeps punters coming back and hooks them for longer, they are unlikely to reach consumer adoption critical mass anytime soon
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Esports is a cloud-based competitive gaming platform that offers weekly and monthly prize contests where players at participating venues in 45 countries compete for the top spot on global leaderboards and earn cash prizes. As part of that, Omniverse tournaments are four-day contests each month that feature two-player teams battling in one of several games, with the top 10 teams winning a combination of cash and prizes such as VIVE systems. Virtuix has held several esports events so far, including a tournament at CES in Las Vegas and, in conjunction with Huawei, a tournament in Shenzhen, China, that reached 11 million viewers.

During 2018 there were over 2.6 billion hours of esports content consumed globally across a multitude of online platforms
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“Virtuix has built a competitive gaming experience that requires both videogaming skills and physical fitness. Such active esports offer a unique way for entertainment venues to reach a new audience of gamers and build a community of frequent players,” says Joanna Popper, Global Head of Virtual Reality for Location Based Entertainment at HP

The first Omniverse global competition of 2019 will be held on January 24-27, features two-player teams battling for the highest score in the popular first-person shooter game Omni Arena. Interested players can find more information and sign up here.

And the move towards investing in esports as a way to advance broader VR adoption is far from restricted to commercial players. UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the UK Government’s non-departmental public body for innovation and research, recently awarded £4m to the Weavr Consortium which will fund a project exploring a cross-reality, data driven personalised viewing experience for esports.

Esports is competitive video gaming at a professional level which has a current global audience of around 380 million people
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“Esports is competitive video gaming at a professional level which has a current global audience of around 380 million people. The esports audience is the ‘audience of the future’ here and now with 80% of the demographic being made up of 18-35 year olds,” explains Margot James MP, Minister for Digital and the Creative Industries. “During 2018 there were over 2.6 billion hours of esports content consumed globally across a multitude of online platforms including; Twitch, Youtube, Mixer, Facebook, Twitter etc. As well as a wide variety of consumption points such as live audience, VR and traditional single screen content.”

The consortium – which consists of ESL UK (the largest esports company in the world), York University, dock10 and Cybula – promises to transform the experiences of millions of fans not only in esports, but in traditional sports broadcast and live entertainment more broadly.

The consortium – which consists of ESL UK, York University, dock10 and Cybula – promises to transform the experiences of millions of fans not only in esports, but in traditional sports broadcast
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ESL will be focusing on the overall project management, utilisation of their esports events for proof of concept and the user experience feedback for those tests. University of York will be bringing their expertise in machine learning, UX design, Human Computer Interaction & research into the convergent space between games, interactive media & TV to help sculpt the overall framework. dock10

will leverage their production facilities to test the framework during ESL’s live esports events. Focal Point VR will contribute their live 8k 360° video capture hardware & software with immersive content studio REWIND helping to create the VR & XR apps & environments for the viewer experience. Cybula’s performance computing clusters will be utilised for big data analysis & delivery.

“At the forefront of an emerging and rapidly growing esports industry, we’re in a unique position to have insight in the live viewing habits and interactivity of young, tech savvy and early adopting audiences” said James Dean, MD ESL UK. “Weavr will create cross-reality viewing experiences allowing fans to immerse themselves in high fidelity statistics, visualisations and data-driven stories that give them deeper insights into live matches, enabling viewers to switch seamlessly between virtual and physical viewing, as well as utilise second screens to watch immersive esports content on the move.”

This Article was originally published on VRScout

Esports Continues Its Push Towards VR via @alicebonasio https://t.co/frhFsgDrJe pic.twitter.com/5b7T3hxy2c

— VRScout (@VRScout) January 23, 2019

For companies looking to get into Immersive technologies our VR Consultancy service offers comprehensive support in strategic deployment of Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Esports Pushing VR Adoption appeared first on Tech Trends.

Native English speakers don’t really think about the fact that most people in the world need to learn their language in addition to their own.

“English is a language that unlocks all kinds of opportunities that can transform an individual’s future. But while there are around 1.5 billion people learning English around the world, currently only 5% of this learning is done online,” explains ABA English CEO Javier Figarola. And it’s this market – worth an estimated $32 billion – that his Barcelona-based English academy is looking to disrupt.

ABA recently became the first Spanish EdTech startup to break the $10 million international investment threshold when it closed a $12 million funding round earlier this year (in addition to $3.4 million obtained in 2014). They will now use these new funds to fuel their growth into key areas such as Turkey and China.

ABA is the first Spanish EdTech startup to break the $10 million international investment threshold
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Dropout rates for online learning usually fluctuate around 95%
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Where dropout rates for online learning usually fluctuate around a staggering 95%, ABA managed to build and maintain a user base of over 10 million students in 170 countries since being founded just 3 years ago. It was also named Best Educational App last year at the prestigious Reimagine Education in 2015 and were the first digital school to be accredited to offer the Cambridge English Language Assessment exams.

It’s about combining technology and teaching into something greater than the sum of its parts
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The interesting thing about ABA’s proposition is that it uses existing technology and best practice methodology. It’s not reinventing the wheel, but combining familiar elements into something greater than the sum of its parts, and transferring tried-and-tested techniques to the digital space. They use film-quality videos designed to maximise engagement by replicating the ‘natural method’. This means that instead of text-based memorisation and learning by rote, students experience real-world scenarios and absorb language in much the same way as a child does, by observing the world.

ABA uses film-quality videos to maximise engagement by replicating the natural method
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Instead of learning by rote, students absorb language through real-world scenarios
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In spite of recent economic challenges, Spain continues to be an important player in the European tech scene, and the charming Catalan city is arguably its start-up capital, attracting over €38 million of funding in Q1 2016 alone while big success stories such as Wallapop and LetGo have each raised over $100 million and are now actively working in the U.S. market.

“Education, and society as a whole, are very different today to how it was years ago. Language learning in particular has traditionally been taught in a very dry way, using the same textbooks and forcing students to sit and learn languages by heart, a way that is rather unnatural when you take a step back and think about it. It’s hard enough to learn like that when you’re young, but even more so when you’re older,” says Figarola.

ABA currently works on a freemium model where users can learn with limited content for free before subscribing to the full course, yet Figarola is also keen to optimise the product for businesses:

ABA currently works on a freemium model
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“A good level of English is absolutely crucial in today’s globalised business environment. There is a trend now towards making education widely accessible and to learning through creative and open methods, focusing more on skill acquisition that can be applied immediately and less on long-term degrees. It will be shaped by an ever-increasing interaction between education and technology.”

A good level of English is crucial in today’s globalised environment.
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Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post The Spanish App Teaching English to 10 Million Students appeared first on Tech Trends.